The night before my son’s big birthday sleepover at the local Ramada, I stumbled on the hotel’s Yelp reviews. I did a little “yelp!” myself. My heart sank as I read bad review after bad review from just days before. The hotel was worn, dated and unclean. More importantly the main water slide was out of order for repairs. As I scrolled through the bad reviews I tried to quickly think of an alternative. The main water slide was the whole point of staying in a hotel. We had a nonrefundable reservation. What to do?
I decided not to do or say anything. I couldn’t do anything to change the situation and I couldn’t say anything to make it better. True, it was my son’s birthday present, but learning to deal with disappointment, and just plain being flexible, is important, too. I decided to lower my own room standards and tough it out. I was there for my son, after all. If he had to deal with disappointment, I could, too. So I kept my mouth shut.
We drove the five miles to our hotel, parked, and the boys dashed for the hotel lobby. My eyes immediately fell on the huge sign on an easel addressing and apologizing for the hotel’s failings. My heart sank even further. The boys however were too excited to notice the sign. We checked in, hauled our bags to our room and headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner.
I sent the boys ahead to scope out the pool area, hoping they would help each other cope when they saw the water slide was closed. They came running back, excited for the water slides, but more hungry than anything. Surely they would have noticed if the water slide was out order, right? I started to relax.
You don’t have to go big. You just have to go positive.
You know what? The hotel was fine. F. I. N. E. Fine.
The main areas could have been cleaner, but there was a lot of traffic. The pools were clean and though both water slides needed updates and the larger one was surrounded by scaffolding, they were both open. And guess what, neither my son nor his friend noticed a single fault. They never even commented on the scaffolding surrounding most of the main water slide.
And me? I had a fantastic time reading for almost three hours by the pool. Sure the hotel ran out of pool towels and the hallway leading to the pool was a little trashed, but I read nearly 300 pages of a novel and had a great time watching the boys have a great time in the pool. And here I sit again reading, scanning Facebook and soaking up the boys’ happy energy. I’m willing to bet I’ll be doing that until our 11:59 checkout time 🙂
If I waited for things to be perfect, I’d never be happy, never enjoy myself and I’d be sending my son the message that fun only happens under perfect circumstances.
For more lessons learned on water slides, read my earlier piece, White Lies and Water Slides.
As the saying goes “through the eyes of a child”. Wish your blog had a “like” button. Sometimes I just want to do a quick “I’ve been here” and not write a comment.
I thought I did have a like button! I’ll have to figure out to restore it. Thanks for reading!
Yay! Look how happy your son is, too. I’m glad you had 3 hours to read by a pool. It was a win-win for everyone, although I know why you were worried. Glad it worked out.